Guild Wars 2

The current AoE target cap is 5 targets. In a group of we’ll say… 30, I think the average size for a turtle. If 5 people go down, its not that big of a deal. Don’t remove the cap entirely, but double the cap. If 10 people go down You have decreased the functionality of the turtle by 33%. That’s rather significant. It also will not break normal play because most people are lucky to hit 5 people with their AoEs even in some choke points.

Increasing the cap to 10 will not be game breaking in other aspects, but will allow effective countering of turtles in WvW

Imo

1. Cheese tactic
2. built upon exploiting/abusing game mechanics
3. Encourages a awkward, non intuitive, and un-fun style of game play

This needs to get nerfed unless you want to see declining subs due to what everyone outside of the few turtling guilds view as abusing of game mechanics.

Guarantee if it stays, WvW will see declining interest. And with declining interest, so goes the player base.

“1. Cheese tactic
2. built upon exploiting/abusing game mechanics
3. Encourages a awkward, non intuitive, and un-fun style of game play”

Fully agree on 3, the other 2… well I do think is really clever they come up with this solution, a while legit it kills the fun of WvW. If it has to become a turtle fest I will be one dropping from it – I love the more fluid combat of GW2 and this tactic kills the spirit of it.

OK I just saw this tactic being used a lot tonight and although we both had equal sized numbers, their zerg had a stack and ours didn’t. We had several commanders and guilds all in Teamspeak co-ordinating our efforts so it wasn’t a mindless zerg going on.

One of the things I was disappointed with was all of our CC seemed to be completely thrown by the way side. We weren’t able to fear, knockback etc. All of it. An entire zerg of people that are completely immune to over half of normal gameplay, player bars and builds. Second to that was they weren’t dodging, avoiding or anything like that. They were standing in one location not worrying at all about active and dynamic combat. One of the core design decisions of GW2 combat was not to stand in one place. This strategy rebuffs all the tools we were given to play that way and rewards people for going against a core combat design decision.

We had mild success with arrow carts. It was a lot to ask to have them built up mid zerg (especially with culling and portal bombs) and people were able to break off and destroy them pretty quickly. When they were already set up and couldn’t be taken down it worked well (like defending a tower), at other times it didn’t work so well. There did seem to be a degree of success on their side in making themselves immune to ballista and arrow cart damage at times. We were barely denting their turtle zerg when we straight up hit them, which seems like it should never, ever be the case.

Players should be encouraged to move, they shouldn’t be rewarded for stacking in one location. That’s not how GW2 combat was built. The path of least resistance should be core combat mechanics, not sudden siege deployment. We aren’t talking about using WvW lay out or design well, we are talking about exploiting a design oversight.

I agree with the people saying this can be countered by siege but removing the AoE cap will break the game. If siege already ignores the AoE cap, why aren’t people automatically winning every encounter at a choke point with five arrow carts? If focused AoE is so broken, yet it exists in the game right now in the form of siege, why isn’t it the dominant meta? There are too many ways to get through AoE at a choke point for it to be a truly broken mechanic (everyone can dodge, mesmers can blink, guardians can bubble the choke, thieves can shadow step etc). A handful of people can’t stop that many skilled players bypassing their AoE wall and then assassinating them.

I could have joined their zerg as a glass cannon ele and nuked the opposing team without anything but fireball spam. I wouldn’t need to worry about dodging or positioning – as long as I’m in the turtle I’m immune to CC and practically immune to being defeated. All I had to do was stand in one spot. That’s a problem in my eyes. Stacking in one spot shouldn’t work anything like this. Remove the AoE damage cap after a few seconds. Players should never be rewarded for standing in the one spot. They should be punished.

Ill say the same thing over and over it makes things alot easier when they bunch up like that.Mag tried the same thing when they tried to take garrison from us and that is the worst tactic i have ever seen makes my 100 blades and everyone elses aoes easy mode keep doin that turtle that kitten is fail.

so the op wants to take 20 players by himself, the cap is actualy good, the balance is good, for 20 players zerg atacking shoud be 10-20 defenders too. not a single archer aoe-ing killing 20 players by himself then braging here how master blaster it is.
This is the forum mentality: “buff everything I am, nerf everything I’m not”. You cant kill 20 players by yourself and cry here? good, get more ppl in www then you see the diference.

Spiritus you don’t understand the OP or the issue at all. It’s not as simple as one person being unable to AoE a zerg themselves, entire zergs are unable to penetrate a turtled zerg because they are taking advantage of a design oversight.

AoE is walled by the cap preventing it from taking advantage of the enemy team’s poor positioning, but the enemy team is able to heal, combo and buff in the one location while resing anyone downed which means they gain a very high degree of efficiency and near invulnerability for stacking in one location while the opposition’s DPS becomes significantly less useful as a result (because the whole zerg is buffing, healing and protecting each other, a single AoE can only hit five people who are being protected by an entire zerg, the balance is completely lopsided because of a design oversight).

I do, but I doubt if you and me, aoe a zerg we hit exact same ppl, mabye I hit 5 ppl, and you 5 ppl. But still… I keep my point, an berseker archer hits really hard, if with 2-3 aoe kills entire zerg I will defent my server with 10 archers instead of one keep/tower.

You guys are going about it all wrong, you don’t ask to raise the aoe cap from 5, you ask to cap the heal and buff spells from unlimited to 5-8 targets in range, that goes for mesmer portals as well. Companies tend to like nerfing instead of buffing spells/skills

Vayra.3290:

nidwin.6731:

Since when has there be an aoe, gtaoe, pbaoe cap on the number of ennemies hit by those skills, being introduced in Warhammer?
I think I’ve missed that patch.

Damage and stacking was nerfed, for sure, but when the tooltip says all players, it’s still all players.

Back to topic
Removing the cap could be a solution but a lot of factors need to be analysed by Anet I presume. (stacking aoe damage, damage from siege, how it works out during tower/keep siege/defense)

Turtling is probably the only situation where aoe healing becomes an issue. Otherwise in all other situations it’s actually very weak compared to the amount of damage being ditched out. Also the normal, non turtling meta-game in GW2 makes it so that it’s a skill on its own being able to spread out some decent healing, but that’s something for another topic I presume.

The cap was introduced a few months in (10 people I think). Usually you wouldn’t hit that many at once anyway due to collision.

No, it wasn’t and still isn’t.
Just to make sure we go on in this discussion with exact data and not supositions from people not playing a game I still play.

“Fully agree on 3 [Encourages a awkward, non intuitive, and un-fun style of game play] the other 2… well I do think is really clever they come up with this solution, a while legit it kills the fun of WvW. …”

“unfun” in itself is enough of a reason to throw the tactic into oblivion. AOE damage isn’t the issue, since simply removing the cap will create impassable chokepoints in lords rooms/gates/etc.

Healing, however, is currently more powerful than the devs envisioned in this situation. Take the unlimited target heals out of the picture, and the turtle strategy collapses. It also breaks the classes players have started to look to as “dedicated healers.”

Just double the AOE cap and see how it goes. 5 is too low anyway.

It won’t have that big an effect in the general case, as you rarely have more than 5 people in the AOE anyway, however it will have a significant effect on turtles.

Schwa.1620:

Healing, however, is currently more powerful than the devs envisioned in this situation. Take the unlimited target heals out of the picture, and the turtle strategy collapses. It also breaks the classes players have started to look to as “dedicated healers.”

Only in this situation is healing too powerfull. The “fights” if you want to call them actually fights are already miserable enough with the poor healing and support we can provide. Nerf it more and the few of us left, many have already given up, will let you all have great fun with dps, dps till death.

nidwin.6731:

Schwa.1620:

Healing, however, is currently more powerful than the devs envisioned in this situation. Take the unlimited target heals out of the picture, and the turtle strategy collapses. It also breaks the classes players have started to look to as “dedicated healers.”

Only in this situation is healing too powerfull. The “fights” if you want to call them actually fights are already miserable enough with the poor healing and support we can provide. Nerf it more and the few of us left, many have already given up, will let you all have great fun with dps, dps till death.

That’s the point. This game doesn’t have dedicated healers, and those playing support should be able to give a “boost” to heals but should never be powerful enough to keep a zerg alive under sustained damage. All of those “dps” players have their own self heal, and the skilled ones should be relying on that along with tactical movement instead of the button-spam healing.

Keep in mind “support” is more than just healing. “Support” characters, warriors included, can do more than just green numbers. Condition conversion, CC, boons— all of this is in the game, but playing second-fiddle to spamming buttons for infinite target heals.

For what it’s worth, my suggestion is that the devs add a few powers, maybe one or two from each class, that specifically combat this. The AE cap is actually a GOOD thing, so instead of scrapping it entirely I suggest making a few abilities ignore the cap in creative ways (not just ‘ignores AE cap and does a lot of damage on a high timer, otherwise you’ll just have a group of people with that ability insta-gib groups of other people when they all do it at once).

Some examples:

A ground targeted confusion spell that hits EVERYONE under a very small radius. In normal fights this would act sort of like a confusion grenade where it might hit a person or two, but a stacked zerg could all get confused with a well placed spell. Replace confusion with blind or daze for similiar results.

Some sort of knockback ‘bomb’ type ability (like Big ’ol Bomb) that may be tough to place but provides unlimited knockback to an area. Some sort of earthquake or windstorm or something could provide a similar effect.

An AE poison (or weakness or vulnerability) cloud with no AE effect.

These are just off the top of my had and some may very well be game breaking or bad, but with a little thought I think some intelligent ‘anti-stacking’ abilities could be handed out that are not overpowered but are extremely effective against groups of people all standing in the same spot. (sort of like feedback). I think this is a better option than just raising or removing the AE cap, because then you end up with roaming groups of insta-gib glass cannons abusing culling and group stealth to warp into the middle of a large group of players and wipe them out before they have any chance to react.

As a bonus, I would like to see these abilities work in such a way that a well coordinated stack team could work together to minimize the damage (everyone spread now! everyone re-stack!) because I think coordinated teamwork is a good thing. Consequently, I would like to see a well coordinated anti-stack team have some more options that siege weapons to deal with them.

I don’t fully understand the whole argument of this topic. It seems counter intuitive. When I play with my guild we bunch up and move around as a tight knit unit so that we benefit from each others party buffs and focus our damage. It takes coordination practise and is a very good tactic to use against the disorganised or larger groups.

From what I can see it seems that the argument is, some guilds have become organised and are coordinating and this isn’t fair because when we are disorganised and all spread out they kill us.

Also there seems to be quite a bit of misinformation about boons and healing and how it applies to multiple people. I can’t vouch for all proffessions but boons apply to the closest 5 people prioritising those in your party. There are many pulsing abilities that apply to multiple people but what it doesn’t do is stack those abilities it will look for someone without that boon and apply it to them. For instance a shadowrefuge that awards regen will apply 1 stack of regen repeatedly to 5 people and will increase the duration as it reapplies. if you have 10 people in the refuge it will apply on its first pulse to 5 people then to a different 5 on its second pulse and then back to the first 5 again.

If you want to see this effect try using blast finishes to apply retaliation with a group of 5 then double the ammount of people to 10 you will see that you can’t provide the same duration for 10 people as you can with 5 by stacking retalliation out of a combo.

Also on the subject of AOE cap I would say remove it and face a whole world of hurt from organised groups and be in a situation where Keeps and other bottle necks are forced into a situation where the only way to take them is to treb / catapult as nothing else will be viable.

Also the AOE from 1 person can hit 5 people. so its not a scenario where you have 50 people trying to aoe a group but only 5 of them are getting hit. each person is hitting 5 people based on proximity or applying conditions to 5 people based again on proximity and who already has a debuff (if it works the same as boons). the reason there is a cap is so that 1 person can’t hit 50 people at a bottle neck. so whilst they are grouped up they are not avoiding aoe damage and there aoe also has the same restrictions.

The reason they are overcoming large forces is because they are both organised and moving around as a solid unit focusing targets and that they benefit from each others buffs constantly and can use other utilities such as walls of reflection and sanctuaries to a much greater effect.

If you want to fight people that are this organised you need to either become that well organised yourselves as frankly you can’t just spread out and all do your own thing in whatever spec with whatever weapon set and expect to overcome really good guilds playing well.

or you can use siege to good effect. cripples from arrow carts and knockdowns from trebs/catapults are fantastic devises to use against organised groups when your team isn’t as well equipped.

One more warning in that if you removed aoe caps you would find these same organised guilds completely and utterly destroying you for the simple reason that they are organised they are well equipped and they will evolve and benefit from whatever system is in place.

The real problem here is culling issue (which still unresolved).

Portal bombing, mass invisible, and turtling just make it worse.

Removing AOE caps does not breaking a game. You can tell that from: WoW (this MMO still online till now). It just need small nerf in AOE dmg, range, or mechanic in it (like damage splashed evenly to nearest foe)

Kyus.3812:

One more warning in that if you removed aoe caps you would find these same organised guilds completely and utterly destroying you for the simple reason that they are organised they are well equipped and they will evolve and benefit from whatever system is in place.

To all of you complaining, you should listen to this man. Whatever game mechanics they put in place, organized guilds will use to their advantage. Be careful what you ask for……

The only issue i have with turtling is the fact that standing IN aoe protects people from it, it just flat out doesn’t make sense, “oh no a barrage of arrows quick everyone stand where they are hitting” :P

that said, personally i loved the lack of cap on aoe in WAR (sadly never played DAoC) it made you bloody pay attention, but let’s keep in mind two things, Personally (not saying it isnt possible) I have NEVER come across any class in GW2 that had the damage potential of bright wizards or sorcerers in WAR, and secondly WAR never had that thing called dodge we have, where you can completely avoid aoe damage(even usable for rolling through chokepoints unless they have vastly superior numbers to lay down an even larger group of aoes, in which case you have other problems), if you’re dumb enough to stand in aoe in this game you should bloody well get hurt from it, im more than happy to continue obliterating turtling as long as its in game, but from my point of view it just doesnt make sense to stand IN aoe to negate it.

Azariah.8420:

The only issue i have with turtling is the fact that standing IN aoe protects people from it, it just flat out doesn’t make sense, “oh no a barrage of arrows quick everyone stand where they are hitting” :P

Well this isn’t true, and this is at the heart of the argument. AOE regardless of anything else hits 5 people. if you stack two aoe’s on the same location it has the capability of hitting 10 people. if you stack 4 then its 20 people.

The rule is a flat one AOE hits a maximum of 5 if a group of 25 people run bunched up you need 5 aoe’s effectively to hit them all. now some aoe’s tick and pulse which means that they will hit everyone but spread there damage out over all 25. the ones that do one direct hit will only hit 5.

Standing on the same spot does not change any of this its the same if your spread out or if you are bunched up. If you have 5 people standing in a star shape form one another or on the same spot it matters little.

What I think you’ll find is causing this effect to seem more powerful is the guild group forming up are focus firing their own AOE on clustered areas and picking you off whilst being able to maintain guild buffs and as I’ve said before this is tactics! the only solution is saying, “you organised wvw guilds right well I think you shouldn’t coordinate and should run around away from one another all doing your own thing so its fair against all of the other players that run around doing their own thing” and frankly thats just an absurd statement.

@kyus, it is true from a logic point of view, If a drop a giant boulder on 10 people standing under it in real life all 10 get hit by it, 5 dont magically not get hurt because the boulder has a cap. Yet if i stand 10 people under one ranger barrage 5 don’t get hit, even though they are standing in it and are physically no more protected than the 5 that do get hit. It does not make sense, at all.

you claim it is the organisational skills of whoever that makes the tactic valuable, whilst i will agree that an organised group will be MORE effective doing it, an unorganised group can still fair remarkably better in this formation that one not in it against aoe.

As i stated already i dont particualarly care if people do it, myself and my guild dont have issues breaking these things, i just think its stupid that it works as a method for mitigating aoe damage.

Please leave “real life” out of discussions about balance in a fantastical video game. There should also be collision detection, siege weapons should take hours to build by a large number of people, everything should do a whole lot more damage, your character should only have one life, etc. etc. etc.

Azariah.8420:

@kyus, it is true from a logic point of view, If a drop a giant boulder on 10 people standing under it in real life all 10 get hit by it, 5 dont magically not get hurt because the boulder has a cap. Yet if i stand 10 people under one ranger barrage 5 don’t get hit, even though they are standing in it and are physically no more protected than the 5 that do get hit. It does not make sense, at all.

you claim it is the organisational skills of whoever that makes the tactic valuable, whilst i will agree that an organised group will be MORE effective doing it, an unorganised group can still fair remarkably better in this formation that one not in it against aoe.

As i stated already i dont particualarly care if people do it, myself and my guild dont have issues breaking these things, i just think its stupid that it works as a method for mitigating aoe damage.

Hey Azariah,

I wasn’t particularly singling out your post as one that didn’t make logical sense in the terms of reality just in the terms of ingame mechanics. the only point from your above post that I’d like to point is your middle paragraph that kind of backs up what I’m saying.

“you claim it is the organisational skills of whoever that makes the tactic valuable, whilst i will agree that an organised group will be MORE effective doing it, an unorganised group can still fair remarkably better in this formation that one not in it against aoe.”

I would state that those “unorganised groups” that are grouping up together tightly are in a means organised because they are adopting a tactic built into the game mechanics. they are certainly more organised than the other unorganised groups not doing it and that even includes guilds with voice comms that are not considering the in game mechanics whilst forming up in WvW.

Capping the AoE boons/heals seems like a viable solution. Only 5 people should be effected just like AoE damage. This won’t effect PvE except for some major DE events like dragons and Cursed Shore (can’t speak for dragons but CS is mainly bots being obnoxious anyhow).

Yes, anyone with half a brain should realize real life comparisons are silly in this regard.

The solution to AoE mitigating clumps, throwing things off balance, is a simple one in my opinion.
Since removing the AoE cap could be as game breaking as leaving it in (at least against clumping zergs), maybe a percentage AoE cap (as in dynamic AoE cap) in relation to the space a number X of targets occupy would solve some issues.
What this would mean is, the more people are close to the same spot the more
targets AoEs hit (never 100% of the targets present, but also not only a fixed number of 5). This would take potential bottle neck issues into consideration, since people usually dont run through a bottle neck on the same spot at the same time, but would give AoE damage abilities back effectiveness against loads of targets on the same spot, i.e. against an AoE mitigation clump.

Thanks,
Pannonica, Engineer
Red Guard, Piken Square

What if player collision detection/prevention was forced in the following scenario:

• If 3 allies are standing in the same spot, then you “collide” and are preventing from entering the spot

The 3 could be tuned down to 2 or up to 4+, of course. Would still allow for tight formations, but would prevent the 40+ people in one spot.

How many people would then fit under a Guardian’s bubble?

“I would state that those “unorganised groups” that are grouping up together tightly are in a means organised because they are adopting a tactic built into the game mechanics. they are certainly more organised than the other unorganised groups not doing it and that even includes guilds with voice comms that are not considering the in game mechanics whilst forming up in WvW.”

yeah see thats where i disagree zerg mentality of do what everyone else is doing, i.e stacking, doesnt count as organisation for me, to me organisation is something like popping a smoke screen for warriors to leap through to stealth and then get up to the crew members of ballistas blocking a chokepoint and hundred blade them. or something along those lines.

i just have an issue with the ability for any group to gain a significant advantage over a particular aspect of the enemy(aoe) with minimal effort(scream stack) in an illogical manner(stand in aoe=good?)

Anyways ive pretty much exhausted my thoughts on this topic, and im probably running the risk of ranting so yeah :P

@Azariah,

ha ha no your not ranting its an interesting topic and your voicing a great opinion. its what forums are for. trust me there are people that just don’t know how to discuss things properly on here so its nice to chat out opinions properly like this.

I can see the two areas this topic is split into, organised guilds running close together because its a sensible formation for small 10-25 man guild groups and groups of players just standing on a commander icon to try and nullify the effects of aoe.

I would still vouch that realistically you still need the same amount of aoe to damage the same amount of players regardless of where they are standing the maths does not change in any respect, it only has an effect on the realisticness (definately not a word).

I’d also echo that siege would be the key device to mitigate against this.

Math is the same assuming aoe all targets someone not already targeted by aoe, which im not sure it does (could be wrong)

e.g 5 people on EB are hit by a rangers barrage, and 5 people in a BL a hit by a seperate rangers barrage, 10 people get hit However if 10 people get hit by 2 rangers barrages in EB it could work out like 6 people get hit once 2 people get hit twice and 2 people dont get hit at all. depends how the aoe behaves in regards to other friendly aoe and their mutual targets. Im not sure how that part works.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Please leave “real life” out of discussions about balance in a fantastical video game. There should also be collision detection, siege weapons should take hours to build by a large number of people, everything should do a whole lot more damage, your character should only have one life, etc. etc. etc.

as for that little tidbit, the term real life was more in a reference to a thing called physics which is kind of integral to video games(and real life incidentally), you should check it out

Azariah.8420:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Please leave “real life” out of discussions about balance in a fantastical video game. There should also be collision detection, siege weapons should take hours to build by a large number of people, everything should do a whole lot more damage, your character should only have one life, etc. etc. etc.

as for that little tidbit, the term real life was more in a reference to a thing called physics which is kind of integral to video games(and real life incidentally), you should check it out

The ensuing argument your anger is trying to create would be a gargantuan waste of time, and I wanted to make sure you know that I’m not biting.

Feel free to think you’ve won.

At the end of the day, I don’t see a problem with turtling yet. I mainly see anger at dying to a stack of players, which really just boils down to dying in general. People get mad when they lose, and it’s almost never their fault while the other players are almost always terrible and shouldn’t have won if not for “gimmicks”.

I’m still excited to stumble on a turtle somewhere when I have time. Can’t wait to dive right on top of it.

Azariah.8420:

Math is the same assuming aoe all targets someone not already targeted by aoe, which im not sure it does (could be wrong)

e.g 5 people on EB are hit by a rangers barrage, and 5 people in a BL a hit by a seperate rangers barrage, 10 people get hit However if 10 people get hit by 2 rangers barrages in EB it could work out like 6 people get hit once 2 people get hit twice and 2 people dont get hit at all. depends how the aoe behaves in regards to other friendly aoe and their mutual targets. Im not sure how that part works.

yeah it sort of does work like that its based on proximity and in the circumstances of pulsing conditions like chaos storm it will opt for targets without the current condition rather than buffing on top, when it runs out of fresh targets it will then stack (I am 99% sure this is how it works basing that it works the same as boon application).

The sum total damage though is the same in the situation that 10 people grouped get hit by 2 aoes when compared to two groups of 5 people getting hit by 2 aoe’s in seperate locations, there is no mathematical decrease in damage. their are some advantages such as sanctuary and wall of warding but there are disadvantages particularly from siege and again from wall of warding which could trap groups such as these. also when you stack its very hard to use combo fields effectively.

Cogbyrn.7283:

The ensuing argument your anger is trying to create would be a gargantuan waste of time, and I wanted to make sure you know that I’m not biting.

Ah one so often confuses anger for sarcasm, bit of pity maybe.

My point was about the logic of a tactic that involves running into aoe to prevent it from damaging you, and logically it makes no sense from either a realism point of view or a gameplay one, although if you have a point why standing in aoe should prevent it from hitting you as long as others stand next to you, by all means share with us. (aside from them all throwing themselves over my player in selfless sacrifice i can think of none)

Kyus.3812:

The sum total damage though is the same in the situation that 10 people grouped get hit by 2 aoes when compared to two groups of 5 people getting hit by 2 aoe’s in seperate locations, there is no mathematical decrease in damage. their are some advantages such as sanctuary and wall of warding but there are disadvantages particularly from siege and again from wall of warding which could trap groups such as these. also when you stack its very hard to use combo fields effectively.

mathematically total damage is not changed true, but total effectiveness of the group is changed dramatically, if the aoe damage for instance was sufficient to down 8 people, but instead downed 4 due to it hitting the same targets you are left with a major difference in combat strength of the group. same reason people focus fire, its more efficient to put 30k damage into one player and kill them then 10k into 3 and leave them fighting(though less so in this game with reviving :P )

anyways if thats not how it works then it’s not an issue,

Groove.3602:

Imo

1. Cheese tactic
2. built upon exploiting/abusing game mechanics
3. Encourages a awkward, non intuitive, and un-fun style of game play

This needs to get nerfed unless you want to see declining subs due to what everyone outside of the few turtling guilds view as abusing of game mechanics.

Guarantee if it stays, WvW will see declining interest. And with declining interest, so goes the player base.

First point you made, Cheese tactic. I imagine if you thought it up you would not agree. That being said, its an old tactic used in many MMO’s to promote cross healing and organization.

Second point, built upon exploiting/abusing game mechanics. In which part of the EULA that you signed up for does it state that you cannot stand next to someone? More importantly, what is the acceptable amount? Assuming that I am in fact in the wrong and it is in writing there. Point is, you cannot exploit/abuse a mechanic if there is no parameters set to do so. And I can assure you I have not had A-Net send me a message saying that I am exploiting by standing next to other players.

Last point, Encourages a awkward, non intuitive, and un-fun style of game play. What? I understand that this is your opinion and you are in fact entitled to it. But what? What is awkward about it, how is it non intuitive? Its relevancy of “Fun” is subjective, some people enjoy it and others do not.

You can’t nerf this tactic. You can try, you can do things to hinder it. But it will always be there. The common ways people think it will fix will only cause further problems in the game or, in fact, assist the turtle because the beneficial effects we put out only affect 5 people as well. Character collision would make people do a /sleep and make a human ladder to get on top of walls instead of siegeing it.

BabelFish.7234:

Capping the AoE boons/heals seems like a viable solution. Only 5 people should be effected just like AoE damage. This won’t effect PvE except for some major DE events like dragons and Cursed Shore (can’t speak for dragons but CS is mainly bots being obnoxious anyhow).

This is already in place.

Steadfast.5827:

BabelFish.7234:

Capping the AoE boons/heals seems like a viable solution. Only 5 people should be effected just like AoE damage. This won’t effect PvE except for some major DE events like dragons and Cursed Shore (can’t speak for dragons but CS is mainly bots being obnoxious anyhow).

This is already in place.

I tried explaining this also but no one seemed to want to listen.

Clever abuse of game-mechanics.

I don’t have an inherent problem with turtleing but obviously the 5 target cap on aoE makes no sense.

Nerf AoE slightly and remove the target cap.

Fixed.

Turtling by itself isn’t game breaking. If a large group want to hold a position, let them. When you’re turtling, you are immobile and even with the 5 hit limit of aoe, you can still kill them with siege and assist.

However, when you combine this tactic with Mesmer portal, the seemingly immobile Zerg can move freely around faster than anyone while gaining benefits from culling issue.

In my opinion, they won’t do anything about Turtling but they may nerf portal. I’m assuming, since balance is cater around tpvp, they will limit it to 5 ppl per portal use.

Sifu.6527:

Turtling by itself isn’t game breaking. If a large group want to hold a position, let them. When you’re turtling, you are immobile and even with the 5 hit limit of aoe, you can still kill them with siege and assist.

However, when you combine this tactic with Mesmer portal, the seemingly immobile Zerg can move freely around faster than anyone while gaining benefits from culling issue.

In my opinion, they won’t do anything about Turtling but they may nerf portal. I’m assuming, since balance is cater around tpvp, they will limit it to 5 ppl per portal use.

I think nerfing portal would be a travesty.

Portal is quite possibly my favorite skill in the game – and I don’t even personally use it a lot. I really enjoy skills like Line of Warding and Portal, which have such limitless potential.

Restricting Portal to 5 people would suck.

So this whole Turtle thing. On one hand, I applaud the organizational skill and discipline it takes to pull this off. On the other hand, I think this very specific tactic is abusing a game mechanic and thus something needs to be done.

What’s the point of having the beautiful castles and landscapes to wage epic battles on, if everyone just stands on top of each other?

If this remains as effective as it is now, eventually all battles will become Turtle battles. I really think this would be bad for the game, in general.

With that being said – I absolutely think Turtling should have uses and should remain an effective option for specific situations.

So,TL;DR – Turtling is fine, Turtling being the #1 indisputable answer to all tactical (not strategic) decisions simply because it takes advantage of a game mechanic is not fine.

Sky.9347:

Sifu.6527:

Turtling by itself isn’t game breaking. If a large group want to hold a position, let them. When you’re turtling, you are immobile and even with the 5 hit limit of aoe, you can still kill them with siege and assist.

However, when you combine this tactic with Mesmer portal, the seemingly immobile Zerg can move freely around faster than anyone while gaining benefits from culling issue.

In my opinion, they won’t do anything about Turtling but they may nerf portal. I’m assuming, since balance is cater around tpvp, they will limit it to 5 ppl per portal use.

I think nerfing portal would be a travesty.

Portal is quite possibly my favorite skill in the game – and I don’t even personally use it a lot. I really enjoy skills like Line of Warding and Portal, which have such limitless potential.

Restricting Portal to 5 people would suck.

So this whole Turtle thing. On one hand, I applaud the organizational skill and discipline it takes to pull this off. On the other hand, I think this very specific tactic is abusing a game mechanic and thus something needs to be done.

What’s the point of having the beautiful castles and landscapes to wage epic battles on, if everyone just stands on top of each other?

If this remains as effective as it is now, eventually all battles will become Turtle battles. I really think this would be bad for the game, in general.

With that being said – I absolutely think Turtling should have uses and should remain an effective option for specific situations.

So,TL;DR – Turtling is fine, Turtling being the #1 indisputable answer to all tactical (not strategic) decisions simply because it takes advantage of a game mechanic is not fine.

I agree, the only factor that blights portals is culling, with a fix for this you have back a fantastic utility essential to any group serious about WvW.

I love it when we’re sieging and a portal appears so we regroup and get prepared to drop aoe likes its hot as the opponents bundle through.

Yazmat.2785:

Terrahero.9358:

Siege has no target limit for their AoE. Whip out some arrowcarts/cata’s/balistae and enjoy scattering their entire zerg in mere seconds.

That is if the arrow cart damage can overcome the healing capability of a zerg which has no cap plus the guardian skills which makes the zerg immune to damage.

Even if people arent all standing on one spot, standing close can still have support (defensive/healing) overcome a lot if not all of the damage if you are outnumbered.

And unless you are completely outnumbered, like big difference, there is no reaon why you couldnt put up a few arrow carts and have your own guardians/Ele’s protect your gates/walls.

Ive seen this strategy used once, and only once because their whole zerg was turned into a big red smear on the ground in no time.
In higher tiers its not used at all, because with even the slightest coordination you can put up a few pieces of siege and completely obliterate them in seconds.

It is simply not a viable strategy unless you completely outnumber the enemy force, and then i wonder why even bother?

Max range Ballista.

Good day to you sir.

Turtles with half a brain move with portals and will portal on your siege before you even finish em or rush it or build their own balista… Seriously stop with your dumb solutions.

Sebyos.4089:

Turtles with half a brain move with portals and will portal on your siege before you even finish em. Seriously stop with your dumb solutions. Or they can simply rush it or build their own balista.

for reals with all the “duh it’s obvious” answers. Top guilds in the game are countering it .. peeps think for reals there’s original ideas that obvious? It’s countereable, it’s not about the counter it’s about how imbalanced it is and weather or not Anet actually intended this effect fromt he AoE cap combined with the NON-Buff cap plus Portal.

combined with the NON-Buff cap

I’m pretty sure people here have said buffs cap at 5 per pulse as well. Can anyone prove either way, or are we just going to continue to shout at each other?

Cogbyrn.7283:

combined with the NON-Buff cap

I’m pretty sure people here have said buffs cap at 5 per pulse as well. Can anyone prove either way, or are we just going to continue to shout at each other?

shouts and heals do not cap at 5 people example.

Arani.9057:

Cogbyrn.7283:

combined with the NON-Buff cap

I’m pretty sure people here have said buffs cap at 5 per pulse as well. Can anyone prove either way, or are we just going to continue to shout at each other?

shouts and heals do not cap at 5 people example.

That isn’t proof. Does anyone have actual proof? Once?

Let us think here. A group of 25 people stand on the exact same spot (the turtle). I am an ele, and I have a deathwish. I run in, and cast my pulsing AoE that does 1000 damage per second, for 5 seconds. (Imagine each person has 15k health) I cast it on the stack of people, hitting at most 5 people at once for 1k damage. Each pulse hits a different group of 5 people each hit. So each group of five only gets hit for one pulse, 1k damage. After my brave attempt to hurt them is over, each person has 14k health left. That is a VERY large spread of damage, and leaves the mass of people virtually untouched. My ele would have to use the pulsing AoE skill 15 times in order to down that group of people. And further, if you factor in a single water ele, (Using the skill the same amount of times as the AoE pulse) using the healing geyser for 800 health a pop, using the same distribution as the AoE, has now reduced your total damage to the mass of people to 200, leaving each player with 14,800 health. With that base damage output per player, My ele would have to use the pulse AoE 75 (OMG!)times in order to drain that 15k health bar for each person, assuming the damage distribution is orderly, and not random. While at the same time, if there were 5 stacked players, I could down all five of those players with just 3 AoE pulse skills. So the turtling strategy, with just a single healer using one skill, can require someone to cast a skill that can down a person in 3 uses, up to 75 times in order to down the person. That does not take into account, any boons, damage reduction, self heals, and all the other heal spells. Something about that math does not seem right at all.

(And yes, some of you can complain about a single ele wanting to down 25 people. That is not what I mean. It was just a base example. The damage more people can do is higher, but the healing output of the 25 people can also be much higher. It was just to show the insane damage reduction that can be done by simply standing in one place.)

That whole idea is counter-intuitive to what GW2 PvP should be about. We are supposed to always be moving. Movement is a key aspect of their design philosophy. We have dodging to help us escape the damage we are taking. So it is extremely counter-intuitive to their core design mechanics by:
1. Standing still in a battle. And,
2. Staying in AoE, rather than avoiding it.

For those claiming that it is for the organized to do, and they should be rewarded for organizing blah blah blah. Tell me, how hard is it to stand in a single place with others? Do you need coordination other than “Stand on me, press f for portals. GG” to accomplish it? I could do that with barely a sentence in chat, and make it work. So tell me again, how is it organized. And if you have troubles where your organized zerg is losing to unorganized, something is wrong. In most battles, an organized zerg can easily beat an unorganized one. If you need turtling to accomplish that, something is wrong on your end.

For those calling it a tactic, you are correct. It is a tactic. (See definition somewhere on internetz.) But the problem is, it is counter-intuitive to many design philosphies Anet introduced. I would rather you use tactics like using terrain to your advantage, better positioning, better skills, more siege, flanking maneuvers, and the likes, rather than standing in one place…

To the people talking about other games, you have no point in bringing that up. GW2’s large selling point was that it was a whole new MMO, different from all the rest. Just because other games it was used, does not mean it should be used in GW2. If you want it like other games, just go play those other games.

And after I got my rant out of the way, I must say this:
Can Anet just give a response? If it is a tactic that you allow, tell us. If you are working on a fix, tell us. if you haven’t made up your mind whether it is a design oversight, or intended, TELL US.

You could end the bickering and opinions and such with just a simple answer to us. It literally takes less than a minute to inform us.

If it is intended, cool. I can work on countering and the likes. If it isn’t, cool. I can go on, knowing that it will be fixed soon, and I can laugh at the people pretending to be so pro while stacking. If you haven’t decided, cool. I will work to counter it, and work to sway you to my line of thinking.

TL;DR – TELL US ANET. Stop letting us bicker and argue when you could just end it now.